Opinion

I ‘ve volunteered for many different organizations over the years including Hosparus, Home of the Innocents, Rotary and various churches. Each time I volunteer, I receive far more than I give. We have some 400 volunteers at Hosparus of Louisville. They constantly give thanks for being a hospice volunteer because of all they receive from the experience. We’re grateful for their work and are humbled by their willingness to serve.

Political signs seem to disappear

Political signs

seem to disappear

To the editor:

Over a period of several weeks, supporters of David Harper have been placing political signs in the community for the upcoming election and the signs have been disappearing at night. ... I hope readers are aware that the theft and/or removal of these signs is a crime and punishable by law, as is the defacement of the signs.

In a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice William Brennan wrote this country has “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”

Kentucky legislators failed to honor that principle when they voted to allow elected school board members to evaluate the performance of school superintendents in secret.

To the editor:

Back in the 1970s I worked in the Detroit area as a parent volunteer  implementing the guidelines of Title IX when the law was still fairly new and understandably not yet fully implemented in school systems. 

I was amazed to read in the article “No Girls Allowed” that some 30 years later our Oldham County school board and school administrators still do not seem fully informed about and prepared to implement the provisions of this far reaching law. 

Jane A. Lapinski

To the editor:

I would like to thank The Oldham Era for shedding some light on the school district’s inequalities with respect to gender in its athletic programs.

I also appreciate your efforts to present a balanced story by giving viewpoints from both sides of the issue. However, by closing the article with six paragraphs on how nice the recent use of the facility has been for the girls without a single mention of how the facility has been so much nicer for the boys, the pendulum swung back too far and the article seemed to lose its balance.

On Veteran’s Day 2008, Chief Warrant Officer Richard Wright of La Grange visited his daughter’s school to talk to the children about what it is like to serve in the military.

Wright was a member of the 416th Facility Engineer Team 8 of Fort Knox at the time. Continuing the tradition, Wright once again found himself visiting a school near Veteran’s Day 2009. 

In 2009 Wright was there to insure that the children had a safe and effective school in which to study.

After Jesus was baptized the Gospel of Mark says, “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him (Mark 1:12-13).”

This scripture verse is the background for the Christian observance of the 40 days before Easter as a time of personal testing of one’s faith. This time is traditionally called Lent. We need such times in our life to take inventory of our values and beliefs, as this Arab fable illustrates.

To the editor:

Sen. Jim Bunning and his Republican brethren did not complain about, nor did they filibuster against, any tax breaks or spending bills granting huge benefits to wealthy taxpayers and big business during the eight years of Republican control under Pres. George Bush.

Somewhere along life’s journey I came into possession of a 1940 wall map of Kentucky that has provided hours of     entertainment.

I get a kick from reading names of some of the communities, many of which probably had schools and post offices at one time, but are now just faded memories.

There were lots of common themes followed when it came to assigning names to places.

For instance, you won’t find many counties that don’t have places named in honor of females.

In Estill county the names include Patsey, Evelyn and Ola.